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Scrobby Scrubs Your Dirty Solar Panels for You

To get the best efficiency out of solar panels, you need to keep them clean. But climbing up on your roof with a scrub brush or hoping a rainstorm will wash them off aren’t the most practical solutions.

This is where Scrobby comes in; it is a solar powered robot specifically designed to clean solar panels.

Scrobby doesn’t require any external power or water supply

Scrobby uses a specially-designed brush to gently scrub the solar panels clean with natural rain water. Staying true to its environmentally friendly cause, it also uses a solar panel to charge its own batteries and has its own collector to collect and store rain water.

Scrobby is capable of cleaning a solar array measuring up to 10 x 20 m (32.5 x 65 ft). That’s because its tethered wire can only stretch that far. The wire tether also ensures safety of the device from accidentally falling off the roof.

Once installed, you never have to look back since Scrobby stays attached to your installation for its entire lifespan.

Scrobby starts working when its sensors detect first rainfall, scrubbing the panel surface and moving back and forth across the field. When the rain stops, Scrobby goes back to its resting platform and will start working again on its own built-in schedule.

Scrobby can be given instructions via a Smartphone or tablet app. It also sends details of its schedule to the same app via Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity.

The Scrobby retail kit will be launched in May 2015 with a price tag of $3,092 for 10 units. This video shows Scrobby in action, which is fun to watch even if you don’t have dirty solar panels in need of a scrub down!

Nidhi Goyal

Nidhi is a gold medalist Post Graduate in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. You can also find Nidhi on Google+.